There has been some disagreement here as to what exactly constitutes a "cryptocurrency". Maybe we can establish a rough consensus here. I just added everything I could think of, so please let me know if I've missed any potential criteria.

Maybe you should be more specific as to what you are trying to ask? The items listed on the pol are more "what are components of a bitcoin type protocol," not necessarily cryptocurrency. We may end up with cryptocyrrency that doesn't rely on the things Bitcoin does today.

If you argue rules with them, they will find more rules - and it's pretty byzantine. They will rely on a "wider" consensus that agrees with them, which while quiet right now, like totally exists, for real you guys. They will call in sock puppets that they have built up for years, and are better at evading checkuser (sock puppet detection) than you are. The number of people who want to keep an article doesn't matter. They will discuss and settle the matter with admins during an IRC chat you don't see and didn't know about.

We should just write articles on bitcoin.it and wait for the mass media to catch up. Since bitcoin.it is licensed CC BY 3.0, it can be copied to Wikipedia's CC BY-SA 3.0 space once the time comes. Now that the project is mature, you should never just start an article in the Wikipedia mainspace for any reason - only move it from elsewhere once it's near-finished, you have a backup, and you're ready to face the deletionists.

I choose to do a technical paper on the definition of a cryptocurrencies, I don't know much and I plagiarism as well as bullshit'd a lot... If you could kindly tell me if all of my facts (most is based on this thread's poll) are correct as I do not wish to put false information out there... harsh criticism is appreciatedI didn't cite my quotes nor was I required to but I've linked all the webpages I used for the plagiarism part.

I choose the audience to be someone interesting in making a cryptocurrency and its about 800 words which was close to my limit. well, here you go:

"

LAYMEN - Cyrptocurrency for Noobs

Since the start of civilization, humans have been trading goods for other goods or services, this process was first done through bartering (direct exchanges for good and services) until a medium-of-exchange was created in which people would trade their goods/services for something universally precious like gold then using the gold for goods/services that they wanted. Gold was replaced with coins, coins were replaced with marked notes, and these notes are now being replaced with digital lines of code know as a Cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency gains its name from two other words, Cryptology and Currency. Currency - A currency can have many definitions and appearances but is understood universally as substance with intrinsic value.Cryptology - Is the study of securing information though intelligent means such that outside parties, which the information is not intended for, would not be able to read such information for it appears as nonsense even if all the information is laid out in front of the party; these intelligent means can vary from letter manipulation, key pass phrases, and mathematical algorithms which allow for the receiver of the message to interpret the essential nonsense that the information appears to be.

Cryptocurrencies are a fairly new invention first released to the public on January 3rd, 2009, shortly after the global collapse of the banking sector, the claimed inventor Satoshi Nakamoto is a supposedly thirty-six year old Japanese man surrounded in mystery and anonymity who was very knowledgeable of four fields: computer programming (the language of C++), cryptology, peer-to-peer networks, and economics. The word Cryptocurrency was first coined by Nakamoto as it became the best way to describe the innovative coin he coded. The cryptocurrency was named Bitcoins, but it can been seen as more bit than coin for it is all digital. Much of cryptocurrency is up for debate as to whether is should be treated like a standard currency, or commodity, or even a security, as it follows all these aspect; It can be traded as a medium-of-exchange, appreciates in value like a commodity, and is used as a financial instrument like stocks and bonds. Soon other new Cryptocurrencies manifested following in Bitcoin’s footsteps, the original Cryptocurrency.

KNOWLEDGEABLE - Programmers interested in creating a cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is software developed by Satoshi Nakamoto with the intention of creating a currency immune to political or banker’s influence along with taking inconsistent and doubtful monetary policy out of command. Developing such software warranted a new word to describe the experimental currency and given its mathematical background in cryptology, spawned the concept of a “Cryptocurrency”. With the openness of the Bitcoin source code, many new innovative and some far more lazy adaptation have appeared. After many variants of design more than a dozen successful and unsuccessful cryptocurrencies were competing on the market along with the original, Bitcoin. For those of you looking to create your own variant of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency there are a few things to keep in mind; there are no strict rules that define a Cryptocurrency because the concept is still being developed with each new variant, but there are five similar features present in all cryptocurrencies that presently can not be avoided. Of these features are a public block chain, a proof-of-work system, a cryptography, digital signatures by spenders, and a peer-to-peer network.

1) Public Block Chain - The public display of the data used by the software client; this includes the number of transactions at each the block, height of the block count, total volume, time & date, the individual or group who relayed the Block, difficult of the block chain, data size, number of Bits, and the Hash (a string data type). This enables transparency of the network by recording the entire transaction history to prevent double spending and eliminating counterfeiting.2) Proof-Of-Work System - Processing unit within a sender’s computer generates computation at the speed of the processor in order to provide the correct solution in the set given by the defined challenge initiated by the receiver of the computation. The receiver than verifies the computation using a mathematical algorithm to check if it solves the defined challenge. If the computation fits, the sender receives a token of validation as well as another challenge.A particular example of a proof-of-work system could be the scheme:

3) Cryptography - The use of a key algorithms allows for each transaction to hold a public encryption key and private decryption key, while the public key is shared amongst everyone on the public block chain to document a transaction has occurred, the private key are use to authorize ownership of the receiving end of the transaction and will be used to authorize further transactions of sending (Co-exist with Digital Signatures).4) Digital Signatures by Spenders - A cryptographic protocol that allows for the authenticity of the receiver to trust the sender based on an algorithm’s output of corresponding key generation.5) Peer-To-Peer Network - A system of computers in which nodes function as both clients and servers to expand the flow of information with or without a concrete infrastructure. The practical use allows for the workload to be distributed along the network as well as connects the users to allows human interaction of digital exchanges over the Internet.

Bitcoins intent was to be a decentralized currency, but since then there have been many more ideas that sprout from cryptocurrency, for instance the registration of domain names in the Namecoin’s block chain, the light weight client and miner alternative of Litecoin’s block chain, and the entirely regulated and closely monitored currency of Solidcoin’s block chain. When designer your cryptocurrency, think not of a way to scam the community like Scamcoin, or copy an existing block chain like IXcoin and I0coin, but instead use the features of a cryptocurrency to innovate the vary word itself."